Thursday 17 October 2013 02.00 EDT
First published on Thursday 17 October 2013 02.00 EDT

R is of course for Ring, Der Ring des Nibelungen, to give Wagner's grandest conception its proper title. He announced the notion in A Communication to My Friends in 1851. "I shall write no more operas. As I have no wish to invent an arbitrary title for my works, I will call them dramas. I propose to produce my myth in three complete dramas, preceded by a lengthy prelude. At a specially appointed festival, I propose, at some future time, to produce those three dramas with their prelude, in the course of three days and a fore-evening."

All this came to pass. Wagner was always a great carrier out of his intentions, however monumental and improbable they looked on paper. He wrote the tetralogy backwards starting with Siegfried's death, delving ever deeper into the Norse legends and medieval German poems on which the work was based.

Das Rheingold forms the prelude to the work, weighing in at a breezy two and a half hours, followed by the three epic dramas – Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, each at four hours plus. If you ever see people arriving at an opera house at 5 in the afternoon, you can bet it's for a performance of Wagner's Ring. The composer wanted them played on successive evenings, but they rarely are. The demands on the singers are too great. Indeed, they are often given as standalone operas, or a house will (for financial and logistical reasons) premiere them one per season and then eventually put on the whole cycle, though almost certainly not on successive nights.

In his excellent book on Wagner, Michael Tanner has a chapter with the endlessly debated question: "What is the Ring About?" There are so many ways of interpreting the Ring – pro-ecology, anti-capitalist, anti-Jewish, anti-marriage – that it has allowed directors a more or less free hand to do what they want. Tanner says most authorities agree it hinges on a battle between love and power, though he warns against too glib an acceptance of that proposition.

In essence, it is a creation myth. In Rheingold we are confronted with a structured world of gods, giants and dwarfs (the Nibelungs) who battle for control of a ring forged by the evil Alberich from gold stolen from the Rhinemaidens. That ring gives its owner control of the world. Alberich renounces love when he steals the gold, and the gold (and the quest for power which it represents) destroys each of those who take possession of it. Only Brünnhilde, daughter of chief god Wotan and the earth goddess Erda, stands outside the power madness, renounces her demi-god status and eventually returns the ring to the Rhinemaidens.

Brünnhilde is, in effect, the first woman, killing herself because she has lost the man she loved (Siegfried) but at the same time ushering in humanity in all its glorious imperfection as the old world of the gods burns. If the immolation scene doesn't make you cheer and cry at the same time (and not just with relief at the end of 15 hours of music), the Ring has failed to work its magic.

R is also for Anna Russell, the Anglo-Canadian comedian who made a career out of boiling the Ring Cycle down into a brilliant 30-minute sketch. It is an affectionate parody of Wagner's excesses, and still guaranteed to raise a laugh, 50-plus years later. Le Figaro called The Ring "the dream of a lunatic", and the late Ms Russell captures that madness superbly.

Oh, almost forgot. R is also for Rienzi, an early and little performed opera (premiered in 1842) but with a tremendous overture that is frequently heard in concert. Wagner disowned the work later in life, but Hitler was keen on it and is even said to have owned the autograph score.